Necessary Evil: Midwest Mayhem

This sessions started with the party considering how to approach the Iron League base at the old Wichita South high school. They decided to leave Gertie nearby, hiding with the Grand Torino and most of their food supplies (quite a large stash, after large gambling wins in Delano). The other four approached, holding up a sign made from a pillowcase that signaled their peaceful intent.

As they approached, the concrete barricades were suddenly lined with rifles trained on them. The defenders forced the gang to wait until they could bring out their leader, Matrona Vladislav. She negotiated with them temporary residence, at a price of 100 food or a mission on behalf of the Iron League every week.

They were brought inside (after surrendering their own firearms) and led into the school building, where they saw that the school had been turned into a small fortress. Lab classrooms had been converted to workshops were the league is crafting ammunition (which appears to be short — most of the soldiers apparently don’t even have a single full clip). Many classrooms had been converted into dorms, the gymnasium had been converted into a training space, and the vo-tech lab housed the Iron League’s big surprise — a Mech the size of a bull elephant standing on it’s hind legs. They’ve named it Titan, after the South High mascot.

The group was given an empty dorm room — converted from a kindergarten classroom, so it had it’s own bathroom with tiny fixtures. They spent the night.

In the morning, Matrona asked the group to scout out what Dawnstar base. Matrona’s attitude is very conservative and defensive, but she also wants to be prepared in case they do need to go after the base.

So, the four (again, leaving Gertie behind, still hiding with the Torino and the food. (Gertie had been cryptic in the Telepathic link created by Ghost — saying “we” several times in describing what she was doing, etc). They walked up to the north part of the ruins of Wichita until they could see Dawnstar base.

The base, hub of all V’Sori activity in the area, sits in the middle of a defensive quarter mile radius circle of clear and crushed earth, just scorched rubble and asphalt. From a quarter mile away, they could see that the base was protected by a shield which was projected by a collection of Shield Towers. Within, blurred by the distortion effect created by the shields, they could see a massive starship, a smaller ship ringed by temporary buildings, and an airstrip dotted with Mantas and M’Bunas.

While they watched a few things happened.

First a party of scavengers wheeled a cart up to one of the towers and traded a wrapped body for bags of something that clearly appeared to be food.

Second, as the party of scavengers was moving away, the top of the shield opened, and out flew a few Mantas. After the Mantas circled once , a half dozen M’Bunas followed, escorted by four more Mantas. The squadron raced off towards downtown while the scavengers pushed their cart of food away from the base.

Ghost mindread one of the scavengers as they got close enough, and determined that they had traded a super they’d managed to ambush and capture for the food bounty the V’Sori offer. The party used Ghost’s mind control over the leader of the scavs to lead them to a burned out restaurant near the scav’s hideout where they questioned them, determined that the father was refusing to join any of the larger communities in the area because he was abusing his children and didn’t want to be judged by any of those communities. Ghost used his mind control to force the father to shoot his eldest son, then Kovak, Cobalt 7-14 killed him. The others were sent, with their food, to round up the rest of the family and take them to a place near the burrow, where the heroes planned to let Edie know to look for them.

By the time the scavs had been dealt with, they had been listening to the sounds of fighting coming from downtown. They headed in that direction to investigate, and it turned out to be a battle taking place at Intrust arena, hideout of the Lost Kids. By the time they reached the area, the fighting was over, but keen ears heard crying coming from the arena.

The heroes made a stealthy approach, and Mithril exhausted himself (two levels of fatigue) using his power to make others insubstantial to phase in and out and help the others sneak into the building.

Inside, they saw what appears to be another one of Kumar’s dozens, standing around a massive “city buster” bomb to which a dozen of the Lost kids (non of the powered lost kids the gang has met before, notably) wired to the bomb in intricate ways.

Of the opponents the gang could see at first, mostly all they saw was generic assassins, bricks, a stretch, and a controller. Behind them, they saw a fresh face — The Alchemist. Mithril’s stealthy entrance brought them around the side, where they found another special opponent, The Spore, waiting in ambush. They attacked the spore, racing headlong into battle.

Or, most of them did. Ghost immediately ran the other way, while Mithril, Deathsuit, and Kovak charged in.

One more super crawled out of the shadows — scuttling on the back wall, Blood Widow, monologging like mad as she tried to get close enough to join the fight.

Things started to go very badly. A lucky punch from a brick incapacitated Deathsuit. A speedster went tearing after the retreating Ghost. Kovak had tried to race into the room with the bomb and was attacked by one last named villain, The Huntsman, striking from hiding with his poisoned, titanium dagger.

Then the controller mind controlled Kovak.

And that’s where we stopped. Here’s the situation:

Gertie is far to the south, hiding in a house full of food, apparently with friends.

Kovak is under the control of an enemy controller

Deathsuit is down, incapacitated.

Mithril is the last member of the team facing the whole enemy dozen. He knows that the alchemist’s negation attack is likely to strip him of his powers if it hits. He has two levels of exhaustion, and a third will knock him unconscious.

Ghost is fleeing, but the speedster is about to catch him.

They knew it was a trap. It was clearly a trap. And the trap has sprung.

In session 8, the F5 crew woke up n Delano and wandered around participating in a variety of activities that looked a lot like civilization of a sort — eating, drinking, carousing, working on construction projects, gambling, and so on. Edwin “Mithril” Morrow even purchased a vehicle to replace the destroyed ambulance — a classic Fort Torino Stationwagon. In one big windfall, ghost won 600 days worth of food.

They listened to Lothar Tannen’s sermon, which layered another batch of peaceful emotional control juju on them.

Then, as they moved around in the little village, they noticed that they were being watched. People in the crowd seemed to take interest in them in unusual ways. They decided to leave, and headed back out into the city.

There was a meeting with the Hoops and Hops trying to recover some of the refugees belongings. Mithril was able to recover some, but the leader of the Hoops was cruel and killed the hop that Ghost had mind controlled. It was scary.

Armed with the ancient shell casing pull from the foundations of a building in Delano, they found the Ben Moreau “The Gypsy King” and traded the casing for healing Ghost’s lame leg.

Moreau told them about another relic — a switchblade comb used by a high school age Don Johnson when he was performing in a high school production of Grease. Moreau told they they could find it in the South High School building.

So the gang traveled south to South High, and found that it is a stronghold for the Iron League. We stopped before the heroes made contact with the Iron League base.

(Note: at this point, the PCs allies like Ratkin are living in the Burrow, and are no longer a drain on the party’s dwindling resources.)

I did not post an adventure log for this session in a timely way, so some details may have been lost.

I will flesh this out when the players arrive for today’s session.

The Firehouse was attacked, driving the gang first to the Burrow, then to Delano for shelter

They took cover in the Veteran’s Hospital for a while, and made contact briefly with some ninjas there. (see Shadows over Wichita. It became clear in that exchange that the ninjas are an all-female organization that thought Gertie was being forced to support a team of men against her will. Once convinced that was not the case they parted.

Mithril wants to send a letter to Lord Eagle to try to make peace. Will try to send it to him through Ben Moreau

Given the information they learned about Kumar’s Intellect Fortress, and how it locks Kumar’s dozens into service, Ghost decided to go ahead and try to break their prisoner, Beam mage, free. At first Ghost was managing to tear down the defenses, but then had a stroke of genius and crushed the rest of the Fortress, setting Beam Mage free without alerting Kumar.

Beam Mage was able to tell them a bit about the V’Sori Fortress, and about the training and processes surrounding the Dozens. He also told the party about a secret stash of Jayhawk supplies — food and munitions — that the V’Sori had not taken an interest in — those supplies were likely still in their hiding place in Valley Center.

So, the gang hopped into the ambulance to drive up to Valley Center to look for supplies — food supplies were low, and they needed to find something.

On the way they were flagged down by a tiny prairie dog dressed up like Captain America. Digger (that’s his name) asked for their help and led them to a scene where another one of Kumar’s Dozens, the The Red Army, was besieging a band of mutated animals trying to escort some others back to the Zoo. Other supers presenter were Buzz Kill and Majesty, a intelligent brown bear (kinda depressed) and a pack of four talking dogs.

Digger tried to lead the gang through the storm drains to the place where the band of animals was hiding, but they ran into an ambush undeground and faced off against a squad of supers led by The Roach. With the help of a controller and an assassin, the Roach managed to get the gang back on their heels — Kovac unconscious, Ghost mind controlled, and only Mithril still active. Then Mithril used a very dangerous technique, moving into the same space as the Roach’s body and materializing himself in that space.
This wound up incapacitating both the Roach and Mithril, but Mithril’s regenerative powers got him back on his feet again in a few rounds, while the Roach disappeared in a scattering of exoskeleton and roach swarms.

With that, the gang skulked away, but Mithril did use his ability to be insubstantial to go to the besieged animals and pull two talking dogs out with him, to at least have rescued a few. With that, the gang had to flee and regroup.

After regrouping, they added Gertie to their number and headed back towards Valley Center, where they found that the supplies were indeed there, but the Jayhawk stash had been turned into a trap which sprung when the gang was inside — first the munitions pile exploded, then War bots rose up out of undeground hiding places and started attacking. The gang was able to lead the bots a merry chase, get the ambulance into the building long enough to fill it with boxes of MREs, and drive away, but not without crashing the ambulance getting it shot up quite a bit, and taking a beating themselves.

The trio met, as had been arranged perviously, with the leader of the local Wildcats enclave, Arlo Bevin “Elephantman”. They discussed and shared a lot of information, including some information about V’Sori efforts to specifically target and capture supers, the Iron League’s refusal to trade with the Wildcats, and so on.

One key piece of information that Arlo dropped was that the V’Sori were rebuilding and fortifying the observation post on top of the Hillcrest — the post that the team had destroyed a week ago.

So, Mithril, Kovac, and Deathsuit set out to see what they could do. A major component of their plan was a desire to try to take control of a computer connected to the V’Sori mainframe long enough to get some good information about the V’Sori and their plans.

The group used Mitrhil’s ability to become insubstantial to enter the rubble-clogged lower levels of the Hillcrest again and move up through the building to the upper level without being seen. Up near the top they saw a lot more activity here than they had before.

There was a team of supers up there — eight of them, all wearing insignia of a KU Jayhawk in all black, with a V superimposed on it. There were a pair of powerful leader types — Gladius and Medusa. Medusa was leading a team that was building supports for a replacement landing pad, while Gladius and his team were working with a V’Sori technician to take the heads from drones destroyed in the previous battle at the top of the Hillcrest and download some information from those heads into the a computer had had on hand. These enemies were supported by four M’Buna transports hovering in the sky near the top of the Hillcrest.

The plan was simple — Kovac would try to teleport onto one of the M’Bunas and capture it while Deathsuit and Mithril would create a diversion and try to grab the portable computer away from the V’Sori technician.

The Diversion part of the plan worked REALLYWELL. Deathsuit flew up into the air, made a opening attack that disoriented a few of the supers, and made himself a very attractive target. A heave barrage of gunfire and attacks later and he was wounded and trying to hide.

Mithril phases in an out of physical existence while trying to catch up to the V’Sori with the computer, who was trying to reach the landing pad to make an escape.

A M’Buna landed on the pad and disgorged four more supers — The Hangman and some supporting characters. They joined the general efforts to pummel Mithril when he was substantial and Deathsuit when he wasn’t.

The V’sori technician nearly escaped onto the M’Buna that had dropped off the Hangman, but by then Kovac had taken over the M’Buna he had teleported onto. He used the onboard weapons to kill the technician. That nearly allowed the gang to capture the computer, but a speedster member of the Rock Chalk Dozen raced up there, picked it up, and escaped onto the Transport, which flew away to safety.

That left two M’Bunas and all the supers. Deathsuit was wounded and hiding, and Mithril was staying insubstantial as long as he could. In the end, Kovac did a quick flyby that allowed Deathsuit to fly into the M’Buna while Mithril escaped in ghost-form down through the building.

Kovac and Deathsuit had a little time to take advantage of. Deathsuit took over piloting the M’Buna while Kovac switched to his computer interface form and tried to use the M’Buna’s onboard computer to hack into the V’Sori mainframe.

Deathsuit flew close to the ground, using buildings and other cover to avoid giving his pursuers a chance to shoot at him much. He managed to keep the game of Cat and Mouse going long enough for Kovac to hack into the mainframe and dump a large amount of data before the risk was discovered and the V’Sori administrators blocked access to their servers.

At that point, Deathsuit and Kovac rigged the M’Buna’s powerplant to blow in mid-flight while flying back to the Hillcrest tower. There, they crashed into the base of the tower, using flight and teleportation to escape at the last minute, and the explosion brought down the tower, with most of the Rock Chalk dozen still on top.

In one last chance to try to get some information and to take advantage of the mess they had created, Mithril used his ghost form to sneak up on the ruins of the tower, find one of the minor supers who was still alive, and whisked him away as a prisoner.

There’s a lot of information to be revealed in the data dump. Its secrets will take time to parse out. But Kovac was able to find a few details. There’s a program called Kumar’s Dozens — the local Warlord, Kumar, has set a goal of collecting and subjugating a dozen dozens of supers. Twelve bands of twelve super-powered soldiers all under his control. According to the records in the data file, Kumar is roughly halfway through the effort — he was at 88 out of 144 at the time of the data dump. The collapse of the tower with so many supers on it probably means that number has shrunk a bit, but the only way to know for sure will be to access the V’Sori mainframe again.

The team started out with a visit to the Burrow to check on the refugees. They seemed to be fine, although they were clearly spread out among the population in a very intentional way, as if Edie was anticipating some problems from them and was trying to make sure it is difficult for them to get together and plan anything. There was some evidence of discontent with Edie, especially from Mohammad Skinnett, the sociologist from Emporia.

Edie asked the three members of F5 to take on a special mission for her — a V’sori observation post at the top of a tall apartment building needs to be dislodged.

The trio started to make their way through the residential ruins and came upon a scene where a team of Drones were gathering bodies after a battle. There were a few clues they spotted — lots of dead roaches, and many of the bodies had been cut into pieces, but beyond that they didn’t notice much.

Several of the victims of the battle were clearly still alive, so F3/5 decided to try to rescue them by stealing the MBuna Transport. Mithril and Gertie presented themselves as targets fighting drones while Kovak used his assorted skills to try to board the MBuna. Heavy use of the drone’s stun attacks made things challenging, but eventually the team managed to kill the leaders of the drones, shut out the others and managed to get airborn.

In the process, clumsy handling of the MBuna’s security settings triggered a response in the form a pair of Manta fighters that pursued the transport and eventually force it to crash. The crash killed two of the four survivors, but two did manage to survive, were stabilized, and the team began hauling the survivors back to the fire house.

The Gypsy King made it clear that he could help them with permanent injuries or dead allies if they provide him with the relics he’s looking for — and he asked them to find a specific discarded shell casing dropped by Wyatt Earp in a moment of embarrassment. The shell casing is lost in the walls of some older buildings in the Delano district, at the site of the Custom House Saloon, which was there about a hundred years ago.

With that, the team made it back to the fire house with the two incapacitated victims. The two of them will put a new strain on the team’s food supplies — they will need to think about food in the very near future.

A week has passed — Ratkin has settled in to the firehouse and appears to be making himself at home. Gertie was bedridden, moaning about a “tummy-ache” and she refused to come down and meet with Edie O’Rourk, who stopped by to visit — this time to ask the gang to take on a couple of missions – one Urgent, another important.

The urgent was to meet a band of refugees coming towards Wichita on the highway, and to convince them to come to the burrow and seek shelter there.

The important one was to go to the WSU ruins and see if they could find out what had happened to James Hooper a professor and scientist who had lived in the Burrow until he’d disappeared a few weeks ago, lost with the team of scouts that had gone to keep him safe on a scavanging run on campus.

The gang, after settling on the team name “F5” decided to start with the refugees first. The four who were not still complaining about intestinal distress left in Mithril’s Ambulance.

They traveled by highway out to an old turnpike service station (now derelict, of course) where the band of refugees was parked in a ring of vehicles. Edwin approached the refugees and opened a dialog. As it turned out, they were being courted by another Wichitan already — Jackson Jeong, a scout from the New Friends.

The Refugees were led by Brandon Stagall, and included a sociology professor named Mohammad Skinnett. They told a story of a human warlord named Lucio, former prison warden in Emporia, who has built a strong and stronger base of operations, demanding tribute and slaves from the surrounding survivors.

With F5 riding herd to protect them, the refugees set out to make their way to the Burrow. At one point during the journey a pair of V’sori Manta fighters flew by — quickly once, after which the caravan stopped and everyone scuttled out of their vehicles and into a ditch before the Mantas made another, slower pass — clearly taking sensor readings but they did not attack. Once everyone was sure they were not coming back for a third pass, the caravan loaded back up and continued, taking a scenic route of back roads the rest of the way to the Burrow.

After dropping off the refugees with Edie, F5 set off to check out the ruins of WSU for some sign of the professor.

They parked a short way from campus and walked the rest of the way — this was in the dark of night, by which they hoped to avoid being observed much by V’sori scouts. As they started to explore campus they spotted a small figure watching them — a figure that moved with quick hops and dashes. They managed to track this figure back to a ruined building where they found an entrance watched by another small, long-eared figure.

Ghost approached close enough to the small sentry to make mental contact with it. Within moments the figure stepped out into the light, convinced it was meeting great friends and opening up about himself (they call me Fourteen) who explained that the Boss (clearly Hooper) was down below in the lab, where Fourteen and his 39 brothers and sisters lived.

Kovak was able to scan the facility with his X-Ray vision and could see the whole lab complex below as well as dozens of small figures (Fourteen called them Hops), and cylinders of fluid containing dozens of more, much larger figures. And one human.

Ghost wiped Fourteen’s memory of their interaction and left him asleep at his post, but by then the other Hops were boiling out of the hole and surrounding F5. Edwin quickly stepped forward and got them talking — they carried a message back to “The Boss”, who told F5 that he would meet with them at the baseball diamond.

So, the gang made their way to the stadium, where Edwin waited on the mound, while the rest of the gang took up an observation post in the press box, high above the stadium.

The hops moved into the area, staying in the shadows of the stadium and surrounding them — but before Hooper appeared, the hops discovered the trio waiting in what they took as an ambush, and things nearly turned ugly again, but Edwin got Hooper talking, and they had a tense exchange. Hooper did not want to talk to anyone, did not want the gang to report about him or his work to Edie, but to leave him alone to continue his work to build an army of rabbit soldiers — his Hoops — who would could be produced in great enough numbers to take on the V’Sori and drive them out.

Edwin asked what the gang could do for Hooper to prove their good will and trustworthiness, and he asked fur guns — lots of guns, to arm his Hoops.

Leaving them with one last admonition not to tell Edie about what he was doing and where he was, Hooper left them.

The gang was watched as they left campus, but the Hops following them didn’t leave campus, and soon the gang felt they were alone, as they made their way back to where they’d parked the ambulance. Then, of course, they were attacked by a huge pack of Chem hounds, feral mutant dogs with acid saliva and an evil nature. The pack attacked until destroyed, and in the process mangled Ghost’s leg, leaving him with a permanent limp.

The gang took the wounded back to the burrow to report to Edie, to whom they gave a full report – Hooper’s location, his intentions, his request for guns, and his mistrust of Edie. Edie was intrigued, and somewhat inscrutable. She did, however, pay the gang in a good supply of food — 100 days worth, and agreed to an exchange of three pistols for one M-16.

We handled some background generation with background cards. The results of the cards can be seen here: Background Cards Results. We kicked around ideas as we played with the cards, but there’s a lot more detail to be fleshed out base on those conversations. Please spend some time in the forums playing that stuff out.

Based on the results of those cards, the PCs have a strong, albeit romantically complicated relationship with Edie O’Rourk, who is a sort of patron and ally for the group.